The Church has always considered essential to preserve its memory, up from the first steps and in times of persecution. After the edict of Constantine in 313 AD, the sacras scrinia had to keep documents and codes. Of that primitive period has not survived anything. In 1612, Pope Paul V, he founded the secret archives, a place to collect a part of that material that had accumulated over the centuries. Today, 400 years later, part of that material, yet to be deciphered, is connected in a sort of maze of 85 km of shelves within the Vatican city.
